A new generation of drinkers want to enjoy the taste of popular beers, with lower or no alcohol. Sensory testing, Will North reports, can allow brewers to profile their existing beers and offer a similar experience without the alcohol.

In this series of articles, we have examined how to establish a systematic programme of sensory testing, learned how it is used by multinational, multi-site brewers to ensure consistency, and discovered how smaller craft beer and cask all brewers can adopt the same techniques.

We’ve learned from experts including James Clarke of Hook Norton, Tom Brown of FlavorActiV, Genevieve Upton of Cara, and Phil Douglas of Brewlab. For this final article, all four experts join us to explain how to deliver flavour in low- and no-alcohol beers.

Ethanol’s complex interaction with flavour

There is a common misconception that taking alcohol out of beer also removes flavour. But Cara’s Genevieve Upton says the impact is more complex. “I don’t think that it’s lesser, it’s just different. Ethanol changes how we perceive flavours, and the different processes that get used [to brew these beers] change how flavour forms in the product. The consumer sees non-alcoholic beer as just another beer without the ethanol, and that’s their expectation. But the reality is it’s something of a completely different beast.”

These differences in the brewing process do result in different flavour components being present in the beer. These should be anticipated as a sensory testing panel is trained, changing the flavour compounds or aromas that should be used.

“The principles of how you do sensory analysis are the same; the subsection of flavours that are relevant differs depending on the route [to reducing alcohol]. You’ve got biological routes with maltose negative yeast, you’ve got mechanical dealcoholization methods such as reverse osmosis and vacuum distillation techniques. You’ve got arrested fermentation or cold contact fermentation as well, all of them differ.” This will require training panels on different potential flavour impacts. 

This all raises an important question, Upton says: “How are we still calling them all beer?” What it means for an alcohol free or low alcohol product to be called beer will differ from market to market. But flavour remains key.

Start with an existing profile

Hook Norton has developed its cask ales over 177 years in family ownership. James Clarke, the latest member of the family to run the brewery, wanted to update the brewery’s range to meet the demands of drinkers more interested in taste and the social experience of going to a local pub, than in the impact of alcohol.

“We’ve done some lower strengths, we’ve got a 2. 5% cask ale out at the moment,” Clarke explains. But he wanted to go further. “We’ve just developed a zero, which we’re very pleased with. It’s a variant of our (4.6%) Old Hooky. You should take an established brand and make a zero version, and then educate the consumer that it won’t taste the same as the version with alcohol.” Clarke’s view here reflects Upton’s advice on setting clear customer expectations.

“Alcohol is a huge part of the flavor development and profile. But Old Hooky Zero is based on a popular, good quality beer that we’ve just taken the alcohol out of. I’ve been very pleased with what we’ve done.  There don’t seem to be many brown ale zeros out there. There’s quite a lot of pale ales, and obviously there’s the famous dark beer.”

Balancing bitterness, body and mouthfeel

Hook Norton’s beer development and quality control has been influenced by the training in flavour evaluation offered by Sunderland’s Brewlab. Joint managing director Phil Douglas points out that the absence of alcohol has an impact on one of the key attributes of traditional British cask ales.

“The challenge is the body of the product and the mouthfeel,” he says. “If you’re measuring how much bitterness you’ve got in a product, it doesn’t matter how much alcohol it’s got in with it.” 

The key is to consider overall balance in the drinking experience. “If you are specifically looking for the bitterness of the product, you can actually achieve that,” Douglas adds. “And what you’ve got to do is find ways to increase the body of the product to match the balance of the beer.”

Consider interactions with ethanol

Upton has explained that there are different routes to a low-or-no beer. “The flavours that are developed in each of those processes, some of them are typical to beer, some of them are different. And the absence of ethanol has a big impact on the way the aromas are released from the product matrix.”

Removing ethanol changes our perception of acetaldehyde. “When there’s ethanol in there, sensory testers are told it’s a little bit like a green apple. And then at elevated levels it becomes more like emulsion paint. Those are the standard descriptors,” Upton says.

“What many tasters aren’t aware of is that when you take the ethanol away, acetaldehyde and ethanol are interacting with each other. If you take the ethanol away, the acetaldehyde doesn’t present in the same way. It was a mind-blowing for me, because the first time I came across this was when I was training on acetaldehyde in a soft drinks company.” Without ethanol, the emulsion paint taste of acetaldehyde presents immediately. And there are many more interactions that should be considered.

Beer, with added functionality

For many drinkers, flavour is secondary to the social function of alcohol, the disinhibition that lubricates an evening out. But even here beer is changing, with new forms of these functional characteristics.

“People aren’t drinking alcohol at the same levels as as they used to,” FlavorActiV’s Brown says. “A lot of companies are moving sideways into functional beverages, wellness or whatever you may want to call it.”

This too will impact on flavour, and introduce new potential attributes, taints, and defects for sensory testing panels to consider. “Sometimes they’re adding juices or other additional ingredients,” Brown adds, explaining that development teams may not always know how this will impact the finished product. Here too sensory testing has a role to play, he concludes: “The training programmes that we deliver and support are usually a good foundation on applying that to different sectors.”